


Watch the Queen Conquer

by verdenal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Beverly Lives, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/pseuds/verdenal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beverly Katz saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch the Queen Conquer

**Author's Note:**

> The end of ep4 broke me, so I fixed it.

Beverly isn’t surprised, exactly, when she feels Hannibal’s gaze on the back of her neck, but the bubble of hope that had been growing in her chest bursts. When she turns he looks like something from a horror movie, something in a man’s skin and a man’s clothing that is not really a man. She isn’t surprised, not anymore. 

He moves too fast for her first shot to do any good, and in the limited light she’s going to have to use her bullets carefully. Beverly breathes in through her nose and moves towards the door—she didn’t hear it lock when he threw it shut—trying to be as quiet as she can, and then he’s on her. There’s a searing pain in her calf that she fights to ignore and then one hand is grabbing her wrists and the other his closing around her neck.

She tries to aim at him but he’s too strong, forcing the gun up and away from him. Her bullet goes through the ceiling instead; at least it sheds a little light on things. Beverly can see the blank cruelty in his eyes for the first time, set in his face like a skull. And then it dawns on her, how he could track her through the dark so easily. She goes still with the realization and his grip shifts. It gives her enough time to swing the gun down and break his nose. At least, she hopes it broke his nose. If nothing else, all he’ll be able to smell is blood. 

Beverly follows that with a knee to the groin and manages to escape Hannibal’s clutches. He rises almost immediately, somehow she’s not surprised that he can take so much pain, and all she can think is that she has to get to the door first. If she can get upstairs, if she can get outside, she’ll be safe. He won’t want to risk being seen.

Hannibal must know that too, Beverly realizes. He’ll want to keep her away from her only exit, push her deeper into his fucking murder basement. She didn’t use to think those were actually real. He’s weighing his options. Beverly keeps her gun trained on him. He’s faster than her trigger finger, but that won’t matter.

She keeps backing up towards the door, keeps in mind what’s to her left, her weaker peripheral. There’s some murder shelving. Good. He’ll have to go right. She hesitates, deliberately, and then Hannibal moves to her right and she turns, tracks and shoots where he’s going to be. Beverly was the best shot in her class at Quantico, and she’s only gotten better with age.

The bullet goes through Hannibal’s kneecap, and he hits the ground with a dull thud and a choked-off, animalistic noise. 

Beverly resists the urge to gloat and limits herself to putting another round through his right shoulder and then bolts out of the basement and slams the door shut behind her. She’s anticipating having to run; a shattered knee won’t keep Hannibal down for long, but then she looks down and finds Hannibal Lecter’s one mistake. The door locks from the outside. Beverly can’t imagine why he would have it installed that way, unless—actually, that’s not a route she wants to go down.

She locks the door and waits at the top of the stairs. She doesn’t trust him not to try to break the door down, and this gives her the best vantage point. With shaking hands Beverly pulls out her phone and calls 911 first. She needs someone to look at the wound on her calf she’s still trying not to think about, and then calls Zeller. For whatever reason, he’s higher up in her recent contacts.

“Will was telling the truth,” she says as soon as he picks up.

“What?”

“About Hannibal. It’s,” she breathes in sharply, “he’s the fucking Ripper, Zeller. Just get everyone down here fast.”

“You’re at his house?”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’m holding the muralist’s kidney in my hand. He had it in the freezer. Saving it for later, you know?”

“Are you okay?” In the background she can hear Price talking and the sounds of rapid movement.

“I will be as long as I get backup.”

“Right, right,” Zeller says. “Look, just, be careful. We don’t need him alive as much as we need you.”

“Christ,” Beverly huffs. “Don’t go all soft on me now.”

“I’m serious,” Zeller says.

“I know,” Beverly tells him, and hangs up.

She tucks the phone back into her pocket and trains her gun on the door. For the first time since she broke into Hannibal’s house Beverly allows herself the luxury of being afraid. She’s afraid that he has a secret escape route and is long gone or creeping up behind her even now. She’s afraid that he’s managed, somehow, to destroy the evidence in the basement, even though there’s no conceivable way, not in so short a span of time. She’s afraid that, somehow, they won’t believe her either. She’s afraid, retroactively, that Hannibal murdered her in the basement, strung her up, mutilated her. Another pawn, another way to fuck with Will Graham and the FBI.

Beverly breathes deep against the pain and the fear and steadies her hands. She can already hear the sirens in the distance. It’ll be over soon.

-

Jack doesn’t come with the rest of the FBI contingent, so Beverly is temporarily spared the lecture she knows is coming. Instead, Price and Zeller hug her awkwardly—both because she still has a knife buried in her leg and because that’s just the nature of their relationship—and then hand her off to a paramedic who is openly trying not to gape at everything happening around her.

Beverly tells them everything she knows. She glosses over her light case of B&E, and directs their attention to the human organs packed into the freezer. The basement speaks for itself.

Much to her distress, she has to go to the hospital. “You need stitches,” the paramedic points out, “and you’re probably going into shock.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Zeller tells her. Beverly gives him a smile that’s more of a grimace and goes.

She doesn’t know how to tell them that she has nothing against hospitals, or stitches, or proper medical care. It’s just that Hannibal has already been rushed off to the ER, having already lost a lot of blood. She’s proud of dealing so much damage but that doesn’t do anything to quell the sick feeling she gets in her stomach when she imagines being in the same building as Hannibal.

The sick feeling doesn’t go away, not while she gets her leg stitched up and proves that she’s not going into shock. It doesn’t even go away when Jack steps into her room, looking shaken and drawn.

“I’m sorry about Bella,” Beverly says before Jack can open his mouth.

“It’s,” Jack starts, “thank you. You should worry about yourself, though? What were you thinking?”

“I saw a chance and I took it,” Beverly tells him, as calmly as she can managed.

“He could have killed you,” Jack says, his voice starting to get louder. “He almost did!” He gestures to the bruises beginning to appear on Beverly’s neck.

“But he didn’t,” she retorts, “and I stopped him before he could kill anyone else. Jack, you,” she stops. Beverly doesn’t know what he’s been told about the scene, what it’s her place to talk about and what it isn’t.

“What,” Jacks asks. It isn’t really a question.

“Jack, he’s a monster, okay? I can’t regret doing what I did. He,” she takes a deep breath and tries to steady her voice. “He had Miriam in there. Strung up like some kind of trophy. I…” she trails off. 

Jack looks like he’s about to pass out. 

“I’m sorry,” Beverly says, and lets her head fall back against the pillows.

“How did we not see it?” Jack asks. It’s directed as much at himself as it is at Beverly.

“Psychopaths are charming,” she says. It’s an inadequate answer, but nothing she can think of seems adequate.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Jack says as he turns to leave. Beverly understands; it’s been a long day for all of them and there isn’t much to be said that hasn’t already been said.

“Wait,” she says, before she really knows why. “What about Will?”

“I thought you might want to tell him yourself,” Jack says, which Beverly knows is code for “we haven’t gotten there yet.”

“He’s still locked up?”

“Technically,” Jack says with a sigh, “we haven’t found evidence linking Hannibal to the crimes Will’s accused of.” He gives Beverly a stern look before she can retort. 

“We will,” he continues. “It’s just a matter of time. Nobody wants to take any chances.”

“Right,” Beverly says, and refrains from rolling her eyes. She levers herself up out of bed and nearly falls before she figures out how to distribute her weight. There’s a pair of crutches in the corner that Jack hands to her. She hobbles out of the door to find Price and Zeller there, trying to pretend like they weren’t concerned. Laughter bubbles up out of her chest, a strange and brilliant thing.

“Anyone want to give me a ride?”

-

When she crutches in to talk to Will he startles like he’s seen a ghost. They’re meeting in one of those creepy, closed-off rooms where they chain his hands to the table, but Beverly really wants to sit down. It’s been a long day.

Before she does, though, she goes around to his side of the table, ignoring the guard’s warnings, and wraps her arms around Will’s shoulders in a brief hug.

“You’re alive,” he whispers, wonderingly, into her ear.

“Yeah, I am,” she says, with a grin fixing to split her face. Will tries to lift his hands but the chains keep them suspended just above the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says when she sits down, “for all of this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Will tells her. 

“No,” she agrees, “but we both know the FBI is never going to formally apologize to you. Or informally apologize.”

He chuckles dryly. “I’ll just be happy if they ever let me out.”

“It’ll be soon,” Beverly tells him. “Jack says they haven’t found evidence linking Hannibal to the crimes you’re accused of, but it’s just a matter of time. I can’t imagine what he has in his murder basement that I didn’t get to see.”

Will’s hands are shaking; Beverly can hear the chains rattling.

“Do you want to hear about it?”

“I don’t know,” Will tells her. “I still can’t believe you…”

“Me neither,” Beverly admits. “I can’t believe I made it out of there at all”

“I shouldn’t have sent you,” Will says. “If you had died,” he pauses and looks down at his hands, “your blood would have been on my hands.”

“No,” she tells him, voice firm, “it would be on Hannibal’s hands. You warned me, Will, you told me not to go alone and I went anyway.”

“And you came back alive,” he says, wonderingly.

“I’m a pretty fucking good shot and I know how to stay calm in a crisis. He’s faster than you’d expect and he’s got like, a dog’s sense of smell but a gun usually comes out on top.”

“Is he?”

Beverly narrows her eyes at Will across the table. She knows what he’s asking but she can’t quite figure out why. There’s emotion in his voice that she can’t quite place, but she figures it’s none of her business how Will feels about Hannibal Lecter. Not anymore.

“Yeah. I did a number on him so he’s in the hospital, but he’ll be fine.”

Some of the tension drains from Will’s shoulders, but his eyes still look haunted.

“Do you want to know about the rest of it?” she asks.

Will nods. “Tell me everything.”

-

Things after that are a whirlwind, and Beverly is unexpectedly grateful for her forced medical leave. She had insisted at first that she be allowed to work on the case. “I caught him, after all,” she pointed out to Jack when he responded that she was injured and had recently gone through a traumatic experience. Beverly hadn’t felt particularly traumatized, so she crutched her way into the lab.

It felt good to be working. It helped her center herself. She enjoyed it. Her hands were steady.

“Are you sure you should be working?” Zeller asked.

“As long as no one sneaks up behind me, I should be fine,” Beverly had said, and that held true.

She was fine, until Price accidentally came up behind her and reached around her to grab something. She saw his arm dart out and suddenly it wasn’t his arm, in its lab coat and gloves, but Hannibal’s arm, in its plaid suit. 

So maybe Beverly whirled around and tried to defend herself, and then Price said to her in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, “Maybe you should go home.”

So she went home.

She’s been back in a couple of times because she’s their fiber analyst, and she’s the best at what she does and she knows the case. Everyone acts like they’re not tiptoeing around her and Beverly acts like she doesn’t know what they’re doing and it all works out swimmingly.

Her leg is healing nicely. She’s getting an amazing scar from it, and she finds herself wearing more shorts, more skirts than normal. Her muscle is still fucked up a little, and will be for a while, but she wants people to see.

She goes to see one of the Bureau’s therapists for a while, like anyone who’s been through a near-death experience. It helps, and Beverly starts to find herself jumping less at sudden noises.

She talks to Dr. Bloom too. She’d suggested it might help, and when Beverly had asked, “You or me?” she’d ducked her head and said nothing. Beverly gets it, though. Alana feels guilty about siding with Hannibal over Will, even though Beverly reminds her constantly that everyone else had done the same thing.

“You didn’t,” Alana says in their last meeting before Hannibal’s trial starts.

“Not because I wanted to,” Beverly tells her, “at least not at first. I just needed Will’s help more than I needed to believe he did it.”

Alana sighs and shakes her head. They’ve danced around this issue since they started talking two months ago, but Beverly has always felt like Alana needed space. Besides, Beverly isn’t the therapist here. She’s been traumatized, apparently.

With the trial on the horizon, just three days away, Alana isn’t going to have any space left. They’re both going to be called to the stand at some point. Everyone will. This is a mammoth case and the FBI is leaving no stone unturned.

“We all fucked up,” Beverly says, and Alana meets her gaze. “You and me, and Jack and the whole FBI. I went over the evidence that put him away.”

“But in the end it was Hannibal,” Alana says, and Beverly can hear the steel and fire that have been missing from her voice since they arrested Hannibal. Alana is a force to be reckoned with.

“Do you think you’re ready?” Alana asks her. “To see him?”

Beverly contemplates asking Alana if she’s ready, but lets it go. “I think I am, yeah. It could even be a little cathartic, you know? Seeing him get his comeuppance.”

“Yes,” Alana says, “I think it will be.”

-

The first day of the trial is a media circus. Beverly forces her way past a throng of reporters calling her name—and of course they know her name, she reminds herself, she’s the one who caught him—without giving a statement; there’s nothing she wants to say that the official FBI statement hasn’t already said.

The courtroom is even more packed than it was for Will’s trial, and Beverly trips over quite a few feet on her way to where the witnesses for the prosecution are sitting. She doesn’t think they’ll be called today, but who knows. She sits down next to Will.

“Good to see you off crutches,” he says.

“Good to see you out of jail.”

He smiles at her. “I don’t know why I was expecting it to be quieter here, but I was.”

“It’s the trial of the century, man. Cannibalistic serial killer works with FBI for months? Media gold.”

“I know,” Will sighs. “People have been calling me asking for comments on the situation since I was released. I’ve had to chase Freddie Lounds off my property what feels like a dozen times.”

“Set the dogs on her?” Beverly asks with a grin. “I get it. She’s been after me, too, but I think I intimidate her more than you do, now that she knows you’re not actually crazy.”

“Fair enough,” Will says. They lapse into a comfortable silence and Beverly gives the room a once over. Everyone from the Bureau that she can even name seems to be here, and then some. Hannibal is already seated with his lawyer. He must have somehow gotten one of his own suits brought to him for the trial. He looks like he always has: cold, immaculate, vaguely threatening.

“How did he even find a lawyer?” Beverly mutters.

“He can be very persuasive,” Will tells her. “And it’ll be a lot of publicity.”

“Are they pleading not guilty?”

“Insanity, I think,” Will says. 

“Who’s going to testify for him?” She looks for Alana, but she’s blocked from her view.

“Not Alana,” Will says, following Beverly’s eyeline. “She would never.”

“No, I know. Who, then?”

“Chilton,” Will grits out.

“Of course,” Beverly sighs. “He’s such a creep; of course he’d want to have Hannibal where he can study him.”

“Which Hannibal will hate,” Will points out, and they both try to hide their smiles.

The judge enters then, and they all rise and silence sits with them. The prosecution starts their opening statement and Beverly is so excited she can barely contain it. Will’s fingers on her wrist still her. She doesn’t look over at him and he doesn’t move his hand. She closes her eyes, breathes in and out, lets the words wash over her, settles in.

When she opens her eyes she can’t stop smiling, and Beverly lets herself feel, for the first time since she picked Hannibal Lecter’s front door, like a hero.


End file.
